Review: It's easy to get caught in emotional web 'Spider-Man' weaves

Stars of 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield talked about their new film at a press conference in Singapore.

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Fans shouldn’t be surprised when opinions of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 vary widely from fantastic to meh when it opens Friday (May 2).

Used with permission of Columbia Studios

It can be messy. It features three villains from the Spidey Marvel Universe – more if you count the corporate weasels in suits. Those villains: Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Green Goblin/Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) and the Rhino (Paul Giamatti) generally make for a rollicking good time at this particularly movie.

Director Marc Webb gives just enough of each without completely torpedoing the plot and turning it into one of Joel Schumacher’s stabs at bringing Batman to the screen.

It can be noisy and overwhelming in that regard, reminiscent of hitting a Metallica concert, but for those who are game, it’s worth seeing in the theater.

Webb, as he did with the first film in his Spidey series, balances the film’s dubious elements with its best. In this case, it's those overwhelming aspects, which in some respects possess a huge “wow” factor, with the movie’s emotional elements, which elicit several raw moments.

Parker’s suffering from deep, relentless guilt over ignoring Gwen’s dead father’s request that he stay away from his daughter after the events of TASM. He longs to find out what possessed his parents, who are assumed dead, to leave him with his aunt and uncle as a young boy.

And he’s at conflict with himself over the role he should assume as Spider-Man in New York City. Those elements work well in TASM2 courtesy of splendid work from Garfield. But this is a superhero movie, correct?

Those moments don’t work quite as well, despite the best efforts for the actors playing the baddies. Foxx has the most fun as Electro. DeHaan, whose character suffers from as much angst as Garfield’s Parker, primarily because he’s dealing with the prospect of a premature death and Giamatti’s screen time is limited.

He’s about as limited as the story that Webb and the scriptwriters try to tell. It’s not difficult to see them working, but there’s not much surety in where they are going with TASM2. In short: they’re not giving up secrets very easily. Fans can only hope that all is revealed in the third film in the series.

Webb was a novice at big budget, effects flicks when selected to direct the first Spidey movie. That’s no longer the case and it shows on the screen with some jaw-dropping special effects. He just needed a little more plot to go with them.

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George M. Thomas reviewed movies and covered the business of movies for area newspapers for 12 years. For seven of those years, the Knight Ridder Tribune news service syndicated much of his work, including two columns. An eight-year member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA), he’s interviewed stars that include Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and many other Oscar winners and nominees. He is a native of the Cleveland area. Please click here to contact George.